'Poems' by Josh McNair and 'Speech-Grille' by Paul Celan (trans. Joshua McNair)

This project is divided between a collection of original poetry, Poems, and an English translation of Paul Celan's Sprachgitter. Many writers have translated Celan into English, including Michael Hamburger, Pierre Joris, John Felstiner, and Joachim Neugroschel, the latter being the only one to publish Sprachgitter in its entirety. While I do not suppose my amateur rendition will rank with the work of these distinguished translators (to whom I am humbly indebted), I hope readers will consider my version of Sprachgitter an original and thought-provoking text.;The original poems, though I am sure they are in many ways influenced by my recent immersion in Celan, are not explicit engagements of his work; likewise, I must acknowledge the translations themselves are colored by my own poetic style, regardless of the effort I made to faithfully transmit Celan's work into English. While these two collections (obviously) interact, even converging at many points and serving as useful supplements to one another, I conceive of them as separate entities and wish for them to be so regarded.